April 17, 2006

When I was a kid growing up in the Christian Refor…

When I was a kidgrowing up in the Christian Reformed Church, one of the things that all of us knew was that in addition to the authorized ten commandments, there were several others that were right up there along side them that were just as inviolable. These were, among others, dancing, movies, card playing and gambling. (To digress a bit, there was a whole set of rules that were a fallout from observing the Sabbath day. This resulted in nearly all commercial establishments being closed on Sunday. It also resulted in many paper boys not having to lug the Sunday paper around since the local CRC Dutchmen knew that God would frown on them causing these paperboys to work on the Sabbath).

I’m here to tell you that in less than a half century the denomination has swung from some seriously goofy legalism to what can only be described as new revelation from on high. According to an article in the April 2006 Banner, which is the official publication of the denomination, not only is there “no explicit biblical teaching that gambling is inherently wrong” but “what we search for in the game of poker is really just an expression of what we’re meant to ultimately search for in life”.

I can’t spit out anything cogent having read this quote from a CRC pastor. But I don’t need to. This guy said it better.

I’d never heard that prophecy about Tiger Woods. That’s some twisted up stuff there. My gosh — talk about vicarious living. That guy had vicarious delusions of grandeur!

Equally weird is the article I found online arguing that the prophecy isn’t, in fact, farfetched. Who’s more foolish, the fool or the one who follows him?

I wonder how Tiger Woods feels, knowing his father told the whole world that he would do more for humanity than any other person in history — including Ghandi and Nelson Mandela and Buddha (and, presumably, Jesus)?

If my father published that kind of smack about me, I’d crawl in a hole and bury my talents just to show that I didn’t buy into that kind of conceit.

I am a new father, and I will now make a prophecy about my son: he will live a whole, rounded life. He will explore. He will learn, and play, and hurt, and love. He will be quite, quite similar to all the rest of us — and we should all love him for it.